I walked over to where Cirilo was filling the ice bin. I thanked him for telling Spatz that he had set the tables. I was glad he had taken the focus off of me. "I thought he was being very mad. I think he want to fire you." Cirilo began pouring ice tea into a few portable pitchers, for refills. "He told me one more mess up and I'm gone." I suddenly realized what a long day it was going to be, with Spatz watching my every move, waiting for any mistake at all. I hated long days, so I tried to let it go. Just pretend I didn't even care anymore. Maybe I'd even try to get fired. "Mister Jenkins, please clean the windows before we open." I turned around and found Spatz behind me, holding a squeegee. "You know where the Windex is." I took the squeegee and retrieved the window cleanser. As I sprayed and squeegeed the windows, I decided that whole quitting and/or getting fired on purpose line of logic I had been exploring was a little premature. No reason to rush things. Just because I didn't care whether I got fired or not didn't mean termination should be an immediate goal. The money at Peachy Burroughs was good, so good that I was often left speechless while counting the pile of twenty-dollar bills I had been stashing under my mattress at home. It was enough to make me forget all the bad things and focus on the good. Having that much money just lying around made me believe I was well on my way toward the illustrious world of success and notoriety. I was thinking about going to Vegas, thinking of rolling seven after seven at the craps table. I would have a big baggy mustache. The dealer would call me Mr. Jenkins, or maybe he would call me Mr. Mustache, which would become my nickname because of my amazing facial amendment. The busty cocktail waitress would slip me her phone number while eyeing my stack of chips. Smoking a Chesterfield and sipping on my complimentary Long Island iced tea, I would laugh remembering my days as a lowly busboy at Peachy Burroughs. "Mister Jenkins, chop chop." Spatz clapped his hands behind me. I dropped the squeegee mid squeeg. "I do believe that window is clean." I had cleaned the same window about ten times in a row, leaving it so spotless it had practically vanished. I moved on to the next window. Spray, squeegee, wipe. Spray, squeegee, wipe. I had found my rhythm. I was a lean, mean squeegee machine. A few people in suits and dresses milled around outside the front door. It was five minutes until the dining room opened for business, and usually there were a few tables worth of people waiting to bust the doors down and commence their fine dining experience. The first diners of the day always had a hurried immediacy to them, engulfing their basket of rolls and polishing off their beverages as if they had been waiting for weeks. And boy were they cranky if you didn't refill their ice teas and coffees before they were halfway finished. Boy did they let you know when they needed more bread and butter. They liked to snap their fingers and say, Garçon, more bread and butter, toot sweet. Candy pulled up in her little Honda Civic just as I was cleaning the very last window. Candy was the opening waitress, and had signed her fair share of EDFs. She was late. I saw her spring from the car with her hair confused, her white shirt halfway buttoned, the cigarette hanging from her lips one drag away from the filter. Mr. Spatz unlocked the front door to let the extravagant loiterers into the Peachy Burroughs Terrace, and the line of customers spilling into the dining room blocked my view. Mr. Spatz sat three tables. He flashed the same pained smile while explaining the daily specials and soup that he did while extolling the virtues of proper dining etiquette to trainees, or pointing out someone's failure to perform within the expected parameters. His smile made Spatz look like he suffered from a painful and extended constipation. Because Candy wasn't ready to take tables yet, Mr. Spatz pulled Andrew out of the bar and made him take drink orders from these people. Andrew the bartender was big in every way. He had at one time been an offensive lineman at some collegiate level, and now was bald as an onion and unpredictably emotional. He was known to throw bar patron's tips back at them at high velocity when they left him coins and break down into hysterics while watching college football. Today Andrew was smiling huge, each of his teeth many inches wide. "Hey, you," he said to me. Andrew never remembered my name. Charlie I told him. "Charlie? Yeah, Charlie. Will you take some bread out?" I shrugged and told him I guessed so. His smile faded and he gave me a dark look like take the bread or else. So I took the bread. Some people have no sense of humor. Cirilo dropped the water. I dropped the bread. Andrew walked out from the cocktail lounge with a tray full of martinis and cocktails, and also a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket. Appetizers, anyone want appetizers? he asked. One table ordered the crab cakes. Another table ordered the artichoke picata. The last table just wanted to sip on their champagne for a while. A group of three people walked in the front door and stood next to the Please wait to be seated sign. Since Mr. Spatz was nowhere to be seen, I took the initiative. It was a younger couple with an older man. The couple wore matching tennis outfits that made them look like some freaky combination of sibling and spouse, with feathered blond hair and sparkling teeth. The older man wore a blue blazer with a tiny insignia like a coat of arms on one side and a white captain's hat, as if he had sailed to Peachy Burroughs in his yacht, even though the nearest marina was about two hundred miles away. I gave them some menus. Cirilo dropped some water. I dropped some bread. We stood around in the rear of the dining room with our hands clasped together behind our backs like we'd been trained to do, waiting for something to happen. After a minute or so Mr. Spatz stormed in from the kitchen. His hair was gone. I hadn't even known that Mr. Spatz wore a hairpiece. Without it he looked diminished, frail, a mere stick figure compared to his former self. He turned to face Cirilo and me. The fury wrinkling his extended forehead and the glint in his eyes gave me the urge to drop to the ground and go fetal to protect my vital organs. "Dios mio," Cirilo muttered. "Mister Jenkins, I've changed my mind about you. You are no longer on probation. You are fired. You can pick up your final paycheck tomorrow morning." Mr. Spatz looked down at his suit, ever so slightly ruffled by whatever force of nature had removed his toupee. He pulled on the bottom of his silvery jacket, sweeping a hand over its surface in an attempt to smooth over any discrepancies. Mr. Spatz was accustomed to making discrepancies disappear with a wave of his hand. He looked back at Cirilo and me. Neither of us had moved. We both stared at Mr. Spatz with our mouths hanging open. "Is there a problem, Mister Jenkins?" "What happened to your hair?" I asked, since I was fired anyway. Mr. Spatz' eyes pointed quickly up toward his forehead, as if he could inspect his hair though the top of his head. Then he returned his gaze to me, as cold and hard as an ice cube. "Please leave the premises." He waved me off with a pass of his hand, as if I were just another discrepancy needing a quick fix. He told Cirilo to follow him, and the two of them left me standing alone next to the two-way door to the kitchen. As Spatz walked past me I noticed that one side of his face was red, a slightly swollen discoloration about the size of an open hand. I wanted to throw a tantrum. I wanted to scream Fuck You Asshole at Mr. Spatz. I wanted to tell him that bussing tables was the worst job I'd ever had, and I'd had some horrible jobs. I'd cleaned stables. I'd cleaned toilets. I'd worked the graveyard shift at an all night donut shop. I'd done horrible things and this had been the most horrible, the king of all royally screwed up occupations. I wanted to rip my stupid vest off and throw it into Spatz' stupid face. I did none of those things. I walked through the door into the kitchen and past the cooks and the lazy-eyed dishwasher. I walked up the stairs to the employee break room, taking one slow step at a time and unbuttoning my vest as I went. As I reached the top of the stairs I removed my vest and crumpled it into a wad of material. I had visions of slamming it down in the trashcan in the employee break room. But then I decided I would keep the vest as collateral, until I got my paycheck. It felt almost like I was taking a hostage. I found Candy in the break room applying a coat of lipstick with the help of a small mirror. She had straight blonde hair and a quick smile, and when she spoke her voice sounded like it was filtering through gravel lodged in her throat. When she turned and saw me, her face lit up. "Hey, Charlie. How you doing?" I wanted to tell her it was going crappy, but instead I said I was okay.